Suicide, sentiment and crisis
Suicide, sentiment and crisis
There is an extensive body of empirical work investigating the relationship between the upswings and downswings of the economic cycle and suicide rates. They are emphatically not typically empirically supportive of the prosperity-induced suicide uplift dimension. This lack of clarity pertains to the precise nature of the transmission mechanism by which an economic crisis actually affects suicide. This study posits the hypothesis that this influence broadly translates as emotional reaction, ‘gut feelings’ and as such explicitly considers the use of subjective factors of economic performance to better explain variations in suicide rates. Alongside traditional economic indicators we use a 'consumer sentiment' measure, a sense of how economic factors are perceived to be impacting on individuals, to explain suicide rates. Furthermore, we explicitly consider the impact of the global financial crisis and test the impact of state public and health expenditures. Results show that consumer sentiment is found to offer a significantly greater explanatory role in exploring variations in the suicide rate compared to traditional economic indicators. Moreover, the effect of consumer sentiment is greater for females than for males, with some nuances in explaining this result. State public and health expenditures do not seem to have any significant influence on suicide rates.
suicide, USA, consumer sentiment, financial crisis, embargoover12
Collins, Alan
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Cox, Adam
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Kizys, Renatas
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Haynes, Frederick
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Machin, Sarah
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Sampson, Benjamin
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Collins, Alan
ddc4d775-dd82-4141-87fd-a0f431353a3e
Cox, Adam
5cc285e5-79df-47bd-b14c-d771e630ffa8
Kizys, Renatas
9d3a6c5f-075a-44f9-a1de-32315b821978
Haynes, Frederick
117c2f32-6deb-493a-9e9f-c4eb4a16ee13
Machin, Sarah
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Sampson, Benjamin
54d7029a-72b0-48f7-a95d-ce60c74e9b0a
Collins, Alan, Cox, Adam, Kizys, Renatas, Haynes, Frederick, Machin, Sarah and Sampson, Benjamin
(2019)
Suicide, sentiment and crisis.
Social Science Journal.
(doi:10.1016/j.soscij.2019.04.001).
Abstract
There is an extensive body of empirical work investigating the relationship between the upswings and downswings of the economic cycle and suicide rates. They are emphatically not typically empirically supportive of the prosperity-induced suicide uplift dimension. This lack of clarity pertains to the precise nature of the transmission mechanism by which an economic crisis actually affects suicide. This study posits the hypothesis that this influence broadly translates as emotional reaction, ‘gut feelings’ and as such explicitly considers the use of subjective factors of economic performance to better explain variations in suicide rates. Alongside traditional economic indicators we use a 'consumer sentiment' measure, a sense of how economic factors are perceived to be impacting on individuals, to explain suicide rates. Furthermore, we explicitly consider the impact of the global financial crisis and test the impact of state public and health expenditures. Results show that consumer sentiment is found to offer a significantly greater explanatory role in exploring variations in the suicide rate compared to traditional economic indicators. Moreover, the effect of consumer sentiment is greater for females than for males, with some nuances in explaining this result. State public and health expenditures do not seem to have any significant influence on suicide rates.
Text
KIZYS_2019_cright_SSJ_Suicide, Sentiment and Crisis
- Accepted Manuscript
More information
Accepted/In Press date: 9 April 2019
e-pub ahead of print date: 25 April 2019
Keywords:
suicide, USA, consumer sentiment, financial crisis, embargoover12
Identifiers
Local EPrints ID: 434804
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/434804
ISSN: 0362-3319
PURE UUID: 25a3c50d-6d84-4d87-8ae8-b3ccbc36dbb0
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Date deposited: 09 Oct 2019 16:30
Last modified: 16 Mar 2024 08:13
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Contributors
Author:
Alan Collins
Author:
Adam Cox
Author:
Frederick Haynes
Author:
Sarah Machin
Author:
Benjamin Sampson
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